Granta Design today announced that CES EduPack (TM) 2013 is ready for shipment, providing educators with updated software and teaching resources as they prepare lectures, project work, student exercises, and course handouts for next academic year’s undergraduate teaching.
The new version of this world-leading teaching resource for materials in engineering, science, processing, and design has a particular focus on interdisciplinary teaching. There are also new ways to get students started quicker, enhanced search capabilities, and more data and resources for advanced teaching.
CES EduPack 2013 is a common resource across all years of study in a wide range of materials-related courses (from mechanical engineering and materials science to more specialist areas such as sustainability, aerospace, or polymer sciences). Now used at over 800 universities and colleges worldwide, CES EduPack combines comprehensive materials information, specialist software to access and use that information, and extensive supplementary teaching materials.
For many universities, sustainability is a common thread linking these courses. In CES EduPack 2013, a new Sustainability Database helps students to explore the social and environmental factors that must often be considered alongside engineering equations when making material choices.
At this year’s CES EduPack Short Courses, held in recent weeks at Philadelphia University (PA) and Cambridge University (UK), participants previewed the new software. The courses included widely-praised lecture units which are now being shared with the materials education community through Granta’s Teaching Resource Website. This is accessible to all educators who use CES EduPack. The lectures join hundreds of exercises, teaching aids, and background papers developed at Granta or contributed by university and college teachers. Some of these resources are available as ‘open access resources’. The resources are valuable to anyone constructing a materials-related course, particularly those charged with integrating materials modules into related disciplines.
Feedback from the CES EduPack community of over 5,000 materials educators, including short course participants, plays a key role in driving ongoing developments. This feeds into Granta’s innovation program, guided by Granta co-founder, Professor Mike Ashby of Cambridge University. An example of this user-focused innovation is the significantly-improved search engine in the CES EduPack software. This is not only faster, but has been further optimized for materials data – for example, to handle variations in expressing material designations. Course attendees also appreciated improvements to usability such as a new start-screen, which gives students quick access to the right information for exercises and project work, and the ability to watch video tutorials on YouTube.
For more advanced teaching, CES EduPack 2013 offers new information to support study of heat treatment and other means of improving the performance of metals. The Hybrid Synthesizer tool, which aids teaching about composites and other hybrid materials and structures, includes new predictive models and enables users to add their own models – aiding investigation of key technologies in the topical area of lightweighting.
“Educators appreciate gaining access to both the latest software and many updated teaching resources well in advance of the new academic year,” comments Prof. Mike Ashby. “This allows them to get ahead in their preparation, enabling great lectures, classroom-based teaching, and student-led exploration and evaluation of materials and their applications.”
Users of CES EduPack 2013 with a license entitling them to an update will receive their new version during May.